Sleepy Bacteria and Power Grids

Inspired by work done by one of my university professors, Thomas Wood, I saw some things we can learn from biological evolutions. Biofilms and dormant bacteria research was an interesting topic I went over during my studies. The idea is delved deeper in a blog: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/the-thinking-undead-how-dormant-bacteria-calculate-their-return-to-life. The main idea is that a bacteria culture keep some of its population in hibernation waiting for a good time to come back. The bacteria gets signals from its environment and if the threshold is enough, the bacteria engines start running again.

Obvious connection to financial markets and applied systems come in the form of signal processing and start stop times. The analogy that can be expanded upon is demand on a power grid for a large city. Since there are seasons, events, weekend, and so on to account for, it would be beneficial to check the pace of electricity demand and know how much capacity to hold. Demand for illiquid stock or assets could also benefit from this type of analysis.

The powerful thing about these dormant bacteria is the resistance to antibiotics or any external threat to survival. The colony keeps a small part within the area with the sole purpose of the chance to survive after the storm settles. Here’s a simple graph I made from the paper by Balaban 2004 .

Don’t kill off resources even if it’s costly, you never know when there’s a signal to use them.